May 08, 2007

Selcuk – Ephesus Ruins Site

It would be a very difficult thing for the hotel host to be any more helpful or for the Urkmez Hotel to be much more of a very welcome surprise. The room is clean as far as inexpensive hotels run and the linen is practically sterile. There are real curtains and furnishings, complete with votif candles on the balcony. Breakfast was enormous: eggs, rolls, fresh vegetables, and fruit plate. The one down side was that the tea is relatively awful, but that is true all over Turkey. Breakfast was served on the roof deck complete with table clothes and pillows with hand loomed covers. Jimi is the owner’s son and will literally bend over backwards to make arrangements for guests. I overheard three different groups, all with arrangements via Jimi.

For me life was simple. Jimi had agreed to take me to the hilltop entrance to the Ephesus Ruins site. This was accomplished via a tandem ride on his motor scooter. This was perfect, as the air was filled with the scent of spring blossoms and even the earth baking in the sun seemed to smell different to me.



This morning I re-read the book of Ephesians, the letter by the apostle Paul, hoping for some historical reference to be carried through and placed in the ruins. No such luck. It was a great book, but no tangible reference to exact location.

Every time I enter a museum or historical site with the headphone audio tour option I think of my friend Todd. He told me once, something to the point of, “If you are going to pay money to go see something, you may as well pay a couple of extra bucks to actually understand what it is you are seeing.” So, yes, I took Todd’s advice and spent the extra $5 bucks for the audio tour and it was worth every penny.

It costs about $7 USD to enter the Ephesus Park. This gives one access to most of the major sites: the Odeon theatre,



Celsius Library, and the larger Grand Amphitheatre. Many of the original streets remain and are constructed of marble block.



The Roman Baths, Varius Skolastikia Hamami, building is remarkably intact, as far as being able to distinguish the purpose of each room.





However, the most incredible site is the most obvious and likely the most bypassed. On the opposite side of the street, between the Varius Skolastic Hamami and the Temple of Hadrian is an excavation site that is entirely “tented”. This is an active archeological dig, where reconstruction of houses destroyed by an earthquake in the fifth century is being carried out. There are incredible mosaic tile floors and wall/ceiling frescos being unearthed. One huge room had multicolored inlaid marble walls. The shattered fragments of green veined marble sheets lay across the floor. It was like the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world.



I wanted so badly to jump the fencing and join the fun. There was one piece that obviously belonged to a broken slab on the other side of the room and it took every ounce of restraint not to say something. The covered dig site easily took half of the total time spent in Ephesus. I was tempted to walk past the entry door, with its additional entry fee, but then figured “Its $7 bucks and when are you actually going to come back?” The ancient mosaics, frescos, and active "dig site" were worth every penny.







Turning left, I headed to probably the most recognizable building in Ephesus, the Celsius Library. The fragments of the façade were reconstructed in the early 20th century by a German archeologist. Imagination can run free in a place like this. My mind kept wandering and wondering what it truly must have been like over two thousand years ago when Ephesus was approaching its hay day.





The Grand Theatre really lives up to the name. A 25 thousand-seat capacity made of stone is no small undertaking for the ancient world or today for that matter. I’ve learned to take both written and verbal tourist guide with a skeptical disposition. One example of this came from the audio tour, where it states that the bible says that the apostle Paul was taunted in this very theatre. If it is there, it certainly is not in the book of Ephesians, so if anyone else knows where this reference comes from I would be curious to know.



The walk back to the hotel from the lower entrance to Ephesus was listed as eight kilometers. There were good views, across the valley, of the cathedral ruins of the traditional burial site of the apostle John. The afternoon walk served as a good re-entry into the world of training for climbing. Thankfully, aside from being very hungry for lunch at four in the afternoon, I wasn’t overly tired. Maybe, I’m finally over the malaria drain and can start to re-build some stamina.



The perfect wrong turn was had on the way back to the hostel. A street opening appeared on the left and being paved it looked large enough to wrap around to the other side of town. In reality it was the entrance to one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, The Temple of Artemus. All that remains of this wonder is one reconstructed column from the ruins.



From the ruins of Artemus, I stumbled across a scene that made me laugh. There was a school yard full of kids playing the internationally renowned sport of dodge ball. The funny part is that they cheered a good throw, even if it connected with no one. If there was contact, both teams cheered and no one was put out. There seems to be different rules for dodge ball in Turkey.





A first test of "added" strength was the overnight bus from Selcuk back to Istanbul. Fortunately, the bus was only half full, so I lay across two seats and extended my legs across the aisle to the far seat. Sitting/laying in the next to last row and with no one behind, this proved to be the perfect position to catch some sporadic sleep.



Unfortunately I slept right through the excursion high light, the ferry bay crossing about two hours outside of Istanbul. Twenty-twenty hind sight, this made perfect sense as the water leg was the smoothest and most quiet portion of the trip.